Pheasant – A Sticky Hat….

by Daniel Mackie May 17, 2013

This pheasant painting has ben a long time coming. This is the fourth version, the other 3 ended up in the bin! Deeply frustrating, but sometimes it goes like that. Occasionally the painting flow like a dream, from initial idea through to completion without a hitch. This one was a battle from start to finish!

The First version was of a pheasant crouching. That one didn’t even see a lick of paint. When I had finished drawing it I left it aside of a while like I usually do. When I came back to it was clear it was bad.. so in the bin in went.

This is painting below was the second version of the painting which I abandoned, the composition was wrong in the middle. when I started painting it, it become clear it was wrong, so in the bin it went and I stared again.

The 3rd one went in the bin, I won’t even post that. as it is in shreds.

A pheasant was standing in a field chatting with a bull.

“I would love to be able to get to the top of yonder tree’, sighed the pheasant, ‘but I haven’t got the energy’.
‘Well, why don’t you nibble on some of my droppings?’ replied the bull. ‘They’re packed with nutrients’.
The pheasant pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the first branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. And so on. Finally, after a fourth night, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Whereupon he was spotted by a farmer who dashed into the farmhouse, emerged with a shotgun, and shot the pheasant right out of the tree.
Moral of the story:
Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won’t keep you there!

Roald Dahl’s book Danny, the Champion of the World made poaching pheasants magical. The method was called a ‘sticky hat’, a raisin’s had a horse’s tail hair threaded through it, It would get caught in the pheasants throat, preoccupied, it can then be caught!

Cards and prints available at The DM Collection

Daniel Mackie

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